Cambodia transits from ‘strongman’ Hun Sen to ‘strongson’ Hun Manet

Author: David Hutt, Central European Institute of Asian Studies

At a mass rally on 1 July 2023, with campaigning underway for Cambodia’s upcoming general election, Prime Minister Hun Sen symbolically handed over the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) flag to his eldest son — Hun Manet — who is expected to soon succeed him as premier.
General Hun Manet, son of Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen holds a party flag as he attends a kickoff of an election campaign rally for the upcoming national election in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 1 July 2023 (Photo: Reuters/Cindy Liu).

While Norodom Sihanouk is remembered as Cambodia’s ‘King Father’, Hun Sen will presumably want to go down as something akin to the ‘Prime Minister Father’. As Hun Sen’s myth-making goes, he was the person who finally brought peace and stability to Cambodia, ending the country’s three-decade civil war in the 1990s.

And he brought a measure of prosperity to Cambodia — a famine state when he took over. Cambodia’s GDP per capita rose from US$247 in 1993 to US$1625 in 2021. He has also defended Cambodian sovereignty. The degree to which Hun Sen, who has been in power since 1985, is solely responsible for these developments is debatable. But Cambodia has irrevocably changed for the better during his tenure.

read more https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2023/07/16/cambodia-transits-from-strongman-hun-sen-to-strongson-hun-manet/